Deputy governor Charlie Bean suggested that interest rates will rise from a record low of 0.5 per cent to 'settle' at 3 per cent between 2017 and 2019

Millions of homeowners are facing a jump in mortgage repayments after a senior Bank of England official warned interest rates could rise to 3 per cent in three years.

Deputy governor Charlie Bean suggested that interest rates will rise from a record low of 0.5 per cent and will ‘settle’ at 3 per cent between 2017 and 2019.

Last night experts said this could add more than £200 to the monthly cost of a typical mortgage of £150,000.

News of the likely rise will add to fears that a generation of homeowners could soon struggle to afford their monthly repayments.

Only last week a report warned 2.3million homeowners in the UK would become ‘prisoners’ to their home loans if there was even a modest rise in interest rates.

The Bank of England has assured households that a hike in interest rates is not imminent, saying that any increase will be gradual.

And Governor Mark Carney has indicated that the rate will not start rising before next Spring. But speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend, Mr Bean pressed the case for taking these small steps sooner rather than later.

He said: ‘The bank rate averaged about 5 per cent in the decade or so before the crisis.

‘It’s reasonable to think that given the headwinds that are still out there as well as some of the global forces that the level we go to three or five years out might be a couple of percentage points below that.’

Mr Bean went on to say that there was a case for moving in ‘baby steps’ to avoid making mistakes as ‘we won’t be certain about the impact of tightening the bank rate’.